The History of Western Travel. Harriet MartineauЧитать онлайн книгу.
subsequent experience, however, has altered my feeling that a voyage is the most pleasant pastime I have ever known.
The passengers showed themselves upon deck some time between seven and nine in the morning. Each one either made his way to the binnacle to see for himself what course we were upon, or learned the important intelligence from some obliging individual who held the fact at the general service. We all asked the captain at first, but soon discontinued the practice when we found that favourable answers were likely to be rare, and how it must vex him to tell us every morning that we were scarcely getting on at all.
After a brisk morning's walk upon deck, no one was sorry to hear the breakfast-bell. Breakfast was the most cheerful meal of the day. If ever there was any news to tell, it was then. The early risers could sometimes speak to the sluggards of a big fish, of a passing sail, of a frolic among the sailors. I was asked once by a passenger, in a tone whose laziness cannot be conveyed on paper, "What, did ye see the whale this mornin'?"
"No. It came at four o'clock, when I was asleep; but the captain promises to have me called next time, whatever the hour may be."
"What, d'ye want to see a whale?"
"Yes, very much."
"Well, but I dare say you have seen a pictur' o' one."
It was not apparent to him that this was not an equally good thing.
After breakfast, the gentlemen who kept journals produced their writing-cases in the cabin. The ladies sat in sunny or shaded places on deck, netting, making table-mats, or reading, or mounted the railing to talk or look abroad. I had a task to do, which is a thing that should be avoided on board ship. I had a long article to write; and nothing else would I do, on fine mornings, till it was finished. It is disagreeable writing in the cabin, with people flitting all about one. It is unwholesome writing in one's stateroom in the month of August. The deck is the only place. The first care, after breakfast, of my clerical friend the New-Englander, was to find me a corner where the wind would not blow my paper about, where the sun would not dazzle me, and where I might be quiet; and then he took his seat behind the roundhouse, with a row of children from the steerage before him to do their lessons. I wondered at first how he would teach them without books, slates, or any other visible implements of instruction; but when I saw him get a potato, and cut it into two and four parts, to show the children what halves and quarters were, I was assured he would prosper with them. And so he did. They went to school to excellent purpose; and I dare say they will send back grateful thoughts all through their lives upon the kind gentleman who attended to them on the voyage.
For some time I was daily baffled in my purpose of writing by the observation of persons who seemed not only entirely ignorant of the process of composition, but very anxious to learn it. Not only did the children from the steerage spy from behind chests and casks, and peep over my shoulder, but the inquirer about the whale was wont to place himself directly in front of me, with his arms akimbo, and his eyes fixed on the point of my pen. Somebody gave him a hint at last, and I was left in peace. By two o'clock, when the deck began to fill again after luncheon, my head and eyes had had enough of writing, and I joyfully mounted the rail. If I wanted to watch the sea undisturbed, I held a Shakspeare in my hand. If I carried no book, somebody came to talk. What fleets of Portuguese men-of-war did we see at those hours! I hardly know whether these little mariners of the deep are most beautiful when gliding, rich in their violet hues, along the calm sunny surface of the summer sea, or when they are tossed about like toys by rough dark waves. One day, when I was exclaiming on their beauty, a young lady, industriously working at her table-mats, observed that it was very odd that she had crossed this ocean three times, and had never seen a Portuguese man-of-war. I concluded that she had never looked for them, and asked the favour of her to stand by my side for one half hour. She did so, and saw three. I strongly suspect that those who complain of the monotony of the ocean do not use their eyes as they do on land. It seems to be the custom at sea to sit on deck, looking abroad only when the sun is setting, or the moon rising, or when there is a sail to be speculated upon. Some of the most beautiful sights I caught were when no one else was looking down quite into the deep, the only way to see most of the creatures that live there. One day I was startled, while thus gazing, with an excessive radiance, like an expanse of brilliant rainbow, far down in the sunny deep under our bows. My exclamation brought one witness to behold, as I did, the distinct form of a dolphin come out of the light. It was a family of dolphins, the only ones that were seen on the voyage. Many a flying fish darted from the crest of one wave into another. Many a minuet did Mother Carey's chickens trip, with their slender web-feet, on the momentary calm left between two billows. Many a shining visiter came up from the lowest deep to exchange glances and be gone. I soon found it was in vain to call people to look. These sights are too transient to be caught otherwise than by watching. When a shoal of porpoises came to race with the ship, every one on board was up on the rail to see; and an exhilarating sight it is, when the ship is going before the wind in a rough sea, and the porpoises dart visibly through the midst of a billow, and pitch, and rise, and cross each other's path, swiftly and orderly, without ever relaxing their speed, till they are tired of play. It is impossible to help having a favourite among the shoal, and watching him with an interest and admiration which, upon consideration, are really ridiculous.
The most generally interesting sight, perhaps, was a sail; and we were never a day without seeing one or more. Sometimes three or four seemed to be peeping at us from the horizon. Sometimes our ship and another were nearing each other almost all day. Once or twice I was startled with a sudden apparition of one close at hand, with all her sails set, black in a streak of moonlight, when I went up to bid the sea good-night. One morning early I found the deck in a bustle, from a ship having made signals of distress. "A ship in distress!" everybody began shouting. "A ship in distress!" cried I to the ladies in the cabin, one of whom came up muffled in a cloak, and another with her nightcap under her bonnet, rather than miss the romance of the scene. The hearts of the novices were all ready to bleed; the faces of the gentlemen began to wear, in anticipation, an expression of manly compassion, as we hung out our colours, shortened sail (one of the first times we had been going right on our course), and wore round, while all the people of both ships gathered on the decks, and the captains brandished their trumpets. She was French, and her distress was that she had lost her longitude! Our good captain, very angry at the loss of time from such a cause, said they ought to have lost their heads with it, shouted out the longitude, and turned into our course again. The ladies went back to finish their toilet in an ordinary mood of sensibility, and the French went on their way, we may conclude, rejoicing.
A distant sail was one day decided to be a merchant ship from the south of France, to everybody's apparent satisfaction but mine. I had a strong persuasion that she was not French, but felt how presumptuous it would be to say so. I watched her, however; and, at the end of three hours, directed the captain's attention again to her. He snatched his glass, and the next moment electrified us all by the vehemence of his directions to the helmsman and others of the crew. It was a rival packet-ship, the Montreal, which had left Portsmouth four days before we sailed. We were in for a race, which lasted three days, after which we lost sight of our rival, till she reached New-York after us. Our captain left the dinner-table three times this first day of the race, and was excessively anxious throughout. It was very exciting to us all. We concluded, after fair trial, that she beat in a light wind and we in a strong one. Some weeks after our landing I fell in with two passengers from the Montreal, who described the counterpart of the scene we had beheld as having taken place on board their ship. There had been the same start of surprise on the part of their captain, who had also left the dinner-table three times; the same excitement among the passengers; and the same conclusion as to the respective sailing merits of the two vessels.
From four to six we were dining. Some of us felt it rather annoying to be so long at table; but it is a custom established on board these packets, for the sake, I believe, of those who happen to find the day too long. Such persons need compassion, and their happier companions can afford to sacrifice something to their ease; so no one objects openly to devoting two of the best hours of the day to dinner and dessert. The rush up to the deck, however, when they are over, shows what the taste of the majority is. One afternoon the ladies were called down again, and found in their cabin a surprise at least as agreeable as my flowers. A dessert of pines and grapes had been sent in by a gentleman